1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system and more specifically to a computer implemented method, an apparatus, and a computer program product for social network based call management.
2. Background Description
The use of cell phones has increased rapidly with the cell phone being the only phone for many users. As a consequence of the primary use of the cell phone, the number of calls made to an individual user's cell phone has also increased. For some users, many of the calls previously placed to land line phones have transferred over to their cellular number, including the nuisance calls and the solicitation calls. In addition, busy people are unable to or do not want to answer all incoming calls whether the calls are arriving on land line or cellular based phones. For example, a user receiving calls may wish to not answer calls from sales people, non-work related callers or unfamiliar callers. In another example, in order to maintain minutes available in the user calling plan, a user may ignore many calls to “save minutes.”
Limited methods are available to restrict calls received on a mobile, work, or home phone to your friends, friends of friends, or associated groups. Typical solutions require the designation of a caller number as a key. The key is then used as search criteria to block the call or to permit the caller to continue. Presently, the choice of actions appears to be limited to either allowing or disallowing a caller from completing a call.
When friends are identified, the call is permitted to continue based on the calling number matching a list of approved caller numbers. Changes in the list of friends may involve updates to the approved list and updates to the list may be controlled and scheduled by a phone company. A friend is identified as a very specific relationship by a permitted caller in the list. There are no friends of friends. The level of relationships is only one level deep. Chaining of relations is not provided. In a similar manner, a friend cannot be a group or simply defined as a member of some larger entity.